By Ahmed al-Akber/Manama

How do you make an idea stick? Mark Twain noted: “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” Meanwhile, people with valuable and important ideas, struggle to make their ideas stick. In the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip and Dan Heath write about six principles to make your ideas stick and help you get your point across.
Simplicity: The essential core of the idea needs to be explained. Arguing a set of 10 points, even if they are very strong ones, would not be as effective as one outstanding, universally understood point. The Heaths cite a military concept called Commander’s Intent (CI), a succinct high-level statement of objectives that accompanies any plan or order. A sample CI might be “Break the will of the enemy in Sector A”, which would then be translated into more detailed CI statements at the lower tactical levels.
Commander’s Intent manages to align the behaviour of soldiers at all levels without requiring play-by-play instructions from their leaders. “When people know the desired destination, they’re free to improvise as needed in arriving there.”
The goal of simplicity is to boil ideas down to their absolute core. Southwest Airlines does this when they claim to be THE low-cost airline. So much so that they have been consistently profitable for decades. What happens when a marketing idea like serving complimentary Greek Salads is offered up to management? The person with the idea is reminded of their mission – which makes the decision to say no much simpler.
Unexpected: How do we get an audience to give us their attention? We need to shake up conventional ways of thinking. Telling them what they already know won’t work here. It needs to be unconventional, surprising, and even disruptive. It needs to get them curious, to the point where they ask for more information.
One of the most powerful speeches by Ronald Reagan was the speech he gave at the Berlin wall, trying to unify Germany, which had been a divided country. The most memorable words of that speech came when he said to the president of the then-USSR the following words: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate. Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Concreteness: Making your ideas clear is another principle of sticky ideas. Concrete ideas have no room for the abstract and too much detail. Here’s an example:
A simple mixture of salts and sugar - oral rehydration therapy (ORT) - in water can save lives in the developing world. Instead of giving facts and figures about how many can be saved, its promoter carries with him a packet of the power and whips it out to, say, a group of prime ministers and says “Do you know that this costs less than a cup of tea and it can save hundreds of thousands of children’s lives in your country?”
To make ideas concrete, use sensory information. Describe the sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. For years, KFC was known for its slogan “Finger lickin’ good” and M&M’s used “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand”.
Saying that the Moon is 384,000km away from the Earth may sound like a lot, but its difficult for the average person to appreciate how far away that is. We tend not to deal with those kind of distances on a regular basis. By making it more concrete, it can be understood better. Saying that if you drove that distance at highway speeds, it would take you 145 days of solid driving to get there. That makes the concept more concrete, as it is a little easier to imagine.
Credibility: Another challenge in effective messaging is to get people to believe in your ideas. Sticky ideas need to be credible, and credibility comes with providing proof. Why do we need proof to begin with? Because we group together in society. When we see someone doing or choosing something, especially if they are similar to us or in our peer group, then we tend to make the same choices they make. That’s why high school teenagers dress alike.
Similarly, when we look to make a purchase decision, we look for evidence before we decide as to whether the decision to buy is a right one. That’s why product reviews on amazon.com are so critical to many. In selling more complex services, testimonials and case studies are a way to provide credibility. These are highlight reels, showing what other people who were just like you are now experiencing as a result of making a decision to buy something that you have the option to buy too.
Facts and hard figures are important credibility tools. How much money does your product save your average client company? Using that in your communication will greatly enhance how its credibility.
Emotions: Why should people care about your ideas? We buy with our emotions, so our ideas should trigger emotions. Emotions make your audience care.
Think of advertisements you have seen where a charity portrays someone in need. They share with you their hardships with you. Then they share facts and figures about how many people have these same hardships. Finally, you are told about how you can make a difference but contributing in some way.
Business guru Alan Weiss says: “Logic makes people think. Emotion makes them act”. Speaking only to people’s logical mind is the mistake that a lot of marketers make when they lead with the features of their products and services. De-emphasise those and make the emotional benefits stand out.
Stories: This is where you empower prospects to use an idea through a narrative, by telling stories. Hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. A prospect can understand how you can help them far better through a story than a detailed explanation of what your product or service does. Here’s the difference:
1)“This is how we help people. First we do this, and then we do that”. Communicating like this is very subjective, and doesn’t always trigger the kind of interest that you would want from a prospect.
2) “This is how we helped one specific client. They had these kind of problems, and we did this and that to help solve them. They then had these kind of results.” Communicating like this, with stories, helps prospects to understand how you can help them much better.

- Ahmed al-Akber is the managing director of ACK Solutions, a firm that helps companies to improve their marketing and sales results by offering more effective ways attracting customers and significantly better products and services. Ahmed has worked internationally in marketing, sales, and strategic planning at companies such as the Coca-Cola Company, Philip Morris International and Dell. Questions or comments can be sent to Ahmed on [email protected]